1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to document retrieval, and more particularly to securely and remotely selecting and retrieving electronic documents from a device such as a personal computer.
2. Description of the Background Art
It is often the case that a user wishes to remotely access a file from a personal computer (PC) or other device. For example, a user may have a PC at his or her office, and may wish to access a file on the PC while he or she is at another location (such as at home, or at a client, or traveling). The user may wish to view or print a file, or to edit it, or to perform some other operation. Even if the user has access to a network-connected computer or other device, and even if the PC that contains the information is powered up and network-connected at the time the user wishes to access it, there is generally no easy way for the user to remotely select and retrieve a document from the PC without having anticipated such a need beforehand and performing relatively burdensome setup operations. For example, a user may set up his or her PC to act as a network server, thus making the contents (or a subset of the contents) of the PC's hard drive available over a network; however, such a solution is cumbersome and difficult for most users, and may also introduce significant security risks.
In addition, many companies have installed network firewalls to guard against unauthorized access to network-connected resources; such firewalls generally block remote access to the devices within the network (including users' PCs). In cases where such a firewall is in place, users generally cannot remotely access files on their PCs without deactivating or reconfiguring the firewall.
In order to address this problem, users may copy all their data to a portable machine such as a laptop computer or a personal digital assistant (PDA). Then, the user may carry the portable machine containing all the files, wherever the user goes, so as to ensure that the user can access the files whenever needed. However, such a technique imposes significant overhead, is burdensome in that it requires the user to continually keep the portable documents updated, and can result in errors if the portable versions of documents fall out of sync with the versions stored on the non-portable PC (for example, if the stored documents are modified after they have been copied onto the portable device). Furthermore, the portable machine may be lost, stolen, or damaged during travel, potentially resulting in data loss and/or unauthorized access to the user's data by anyone who steals or finds the device. Finally, such a technique requires that the user anticipate his or her document needs, which is not always feasible or possible.
A related problem is that a user in an office environment may wish to print a document while he or she is standing at a printer that may be located in a different room than the user's PC. Conventionally, there is no way for a user to select, retrieve, and print a document from his or her office PC, via an interface at a centrally located printer. Rather, the user must return to his or her own PC, select the document, and activate the print function to send the document to the printer. The user must then return again to the printer to retrieve the hard copy of his or her document.
What is needed is a technique for allowing a user to remotely and securely select and access files on his or her PC, from virtually any network-connected location. What is further needed is a technique that allows such remote access even when a firewall is in place. What is further needed is a technique that allows a user to select and print a document from his or her PC, while he or she is standing at a printer (or other device) that is not in the same physical location as the PC.